LOS ANGELES—The Electronic Entertainment Show officially starts on Tuesday, but some of gaming's big names have already made major announcements. Bethesda Softworks held its E3 showcase on Sunday night, providing new information about the recently announced Fallout 76 and unveiling a few other long-awaited games.

Fallout 76 is the latest game in the Fallout series but also the earliest chapter, chronologically. It takes place only two decades after the nuclear war that created the Fallout setting, focusing on residents of Vault 76 as they explore the new wasteland to reclaim it. Bethesda confirmed that the game takes place in West Virginia, with a map four times larger than the New England region in Fallout 4 .

More intriguingly, Fallout 76 will be primarily online, a first in the series. It will retain the first-person perspective and RPG-influenced action of the previous three major Fallout games, but enable cooperative and competitive multiplayer in a semi-massively multiplayer online environment. It won't be a full MMO like The Elder Scrolls Online or World of Warcraft, but will bring handfuls of players together in instanced servers designed to support a few dozen at a time. It's a similar model to the Destiny games, with additional emphasis on Fortnite-like base building.

Separately post-apocalyptic action game Rage 2 was officially announced as well, after being prematurely revealed on Wal-Mart Canada's site a few weeks ago. The game takes place on a ruined Earth after an asteroid kills most of the population, leaving a wasteland that's much more akin to Mad Max: Fury Road than Fallout. The game features vehicular combat, nanotechnology fighting skills, and an emphasis on action rather than the more RPG-oriented gameplay of Fallout.

The vocally anti-fascist Wolfenstein series is getting a sequel next year. Wolfenstein: Youngblood continues the alternate history storyline of the previous two Wolfenstein games, moving time forward to the 1980s, where series hero B.J. Blazkowicz's two daughters fight Nazis in an occupied Paris. This new Wolfenstein game will offer fully cooperative play, where two players can fight through the entire campaign together as the Blazkowicz sisters. It will also be playable in a single-player mode, like the previous games.

The well-received Doom reboot will also be seeing a sequel in Doom: Eternal. Bethesda hasn't revealed many details about the game yet, other than that it will have twice as many demons as Doom, and will bring "hell on Earth," a reference to the original Doom 2 released in 1994.

After a long period of speculation and rumor, Bethesda officially revealed Starfield, its upcoming science-fiction game. The announcement showed little more than an exploding satellite and a logo, but it looks to be Bethesda's next major first-part single-player game project.

A new Elder Scrolls game was also teased at the showcase. It doesn't have an official subtitle yet, but The Elder Scrolls VI has now been officially announced as under development. The previous major Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim, was released in 2011 and has since seen so many ports and re-releases that Bethesda's own showcase made an elaborate joke about the game coming to the Amazon Echo($39.99 at Amazon) . (So elaborate that the Alexa Skill actually exists.) No details are known about The Elder Scrolls VI, other than that it will be a new, full Elder Scrolls game.

On the smaller scale, Bethesda unveiled The Elder Scrolls: Blades for iOS and numerous other platforms. This first-person dungeon crawler takes the series' general gameplay structure and puts it on mobile devices. Bethesda plans to port Blades to PC, consoles, and release a VR version.

Bethesda's sci-fi survival horror game Prey just received a free update, released on the same night as its announcement. Prey: Mooncrash adds new game modes, including a semi-roguelike mode that randomizes enemy encounters, hazards, and equipment on every playthrough.

Prey will also receive a paid DLC pack, Typhon Hunter, later this year, which will add an asymmetrical multiplayer game mode where one player as a human faces five other players menacing them as Typhon aliens. Typhon Hunter will be playable on virtual reality platforms, as well.

Finally, speaking of content released the night it's announced, Bethesda unveiled and launched Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 ports of its popular free-to-play management game Fallout Shelter; they're available on their respective platforms now.

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Will Greenwald has been covering consumer technology for a decade, and has served on the editorial staffs of CNET.com, Sound & Vision, and Maximum PC. His work and analysis has been seen in GamePro, Tested.com, Geek.com, and several other publications. He currently covers consumer electronics in the PC Labs as the in-house home entertainment expert, reviewing TVs, media hubs, speakers, headphones, and gaming accessories. Will is also an ISF Level II-certified TV calibrator, which ensures the thoroughness and accuracy of all PCMag TV reviews.

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